ABSTRACT
Systemic therapists are at present exploring a wide range of mind-sets and techniques aimed at allowing client voices to achieve equivalence with those of therapists, and at making therapist functioning more transparent and available for discussion and critique. In seeking to legitimize the exploration of the influence of the self of the therapist on the process of therapy, systemic therapists have reached for ideas, derived from psychoanalysis, about the influence of the therapist’s own history, relationships, and internal world. Systemic therapists are in the fortunate position of being able to benefit from these and similar explorations in the psychoanalytic field, while also holding our own unique and valuable awareness of the pull that systems can exert on their members, the invitation to achieve a fit with pre-existing patterns, the ways in which influence and adaptation occur within systems over time.
